Several early Christian authors figured Christian virgins as a "garden
enclosed" (an expression derived from Song of Songs 4:12). In this
paper, I analyze a related image we find in Gregory of Nyssa's On
Virginity. In chapter 13 of this text, Gregory imagines the Christian
virgin as a boundary stone policing the entrance to (the garden of) Paradise. I
suggest that Gregory's argument here purposively calls to mind another figure
who policed garden entrances: Priapus. Statues of Priapus--depicting him with an
oversized and permanently erect penis, and accompanied with inscriptions that
threatened sexual violence to anyone who dared trespass--were commonplace in
aristocratic Greco-Roman gardens. I suspect that Gregory is deliberately setting
up Christian virgins in contrast to the hyper-sexualized Priapus in order to
subvert conventional Greco-Roman sensibilities about elite status and the good
life. Specifically, Gregory opposes the luxury of an aristocratic life
symbolized by their gardens and in its place he situates the Christian virgin
whose life of devotion to God-a life characterized by a renunciation of sex and
of the trappings of the world-will grant her entrance into Paradise. In this
paper, I contend that we understand the full logic of Gregory's argument only
when we conjure the landscapes and associations of Greco-Roman gardens.
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